‘I came here to kick butt and support the arts…’

DeltaARTS Trivia Challenge raises more than $6,000 By Ralph Hardin

ralphhardin@gmail.com

I never said it would be easy, but I did promise victory.

And it wasn’t easy…

no, not at all, but in the end, I’m sitting here in my office looking at my precious — the firstplace trophy for the 2020 DeltaARTS Corporate Trivia Challenge.

Back in the day, the team from the Evening Times used to win the Trivia Challenge all the time. But, sadly, some of my cohorts have moved away and on to bigger and better challenges, so the brain trust isn’t what it used to be. And the reality is that as newspapers struggle, as we have, spending money on things like entry fees, even if it’s for a good cause, just had to go by the wayside.

But last year, the fine folks at DeltaARTS started inviting “group of friends” teams to join in on the fun right next to the many local businesses, schools, and nonprofit organizations that participate every year. I would have immediately jumped at the chance to get back into the competition last year, but I had some kind of prior commitment. So when this year’s event was announced, I cleared my calendar!

I knew there were some holes in my trivia game (I can’t name a single Kardashian with any confidence), so I recruited my lovely wife and a couple that we’re friends with. Being the Hardins and the Corders, our team name was, of course, Hard-Cor. We even invited another couple from our Sunday School class to give us some more brain power.

It was with all the confidence in the world that we made our way to the Kennel Club at Southland Casino Racing on Monday night to be a part of this great annual event that really does go a long way to helping support Delta-ARTS programs. I was told they raised more than $6,000 that night.

If you’ve not been to a DeltaARTS Trivia Challenge in a while, or ever, it used to be the old “quiz bowl” type of setup, where each member of the team has a buzzer in hand.

A few years ago, they switched to the currently popular “bar trivia” setup where each table turns in an answer and there’s a running point total.

Well, we got some tough questions this year, but we got a lot of them right… but so did a lot of other folks.

At half-time, we were squarely in the middle of the pack, probably 6th or 7th place out of 15 teams. But, we turned it on in the second half, where the points doubled, and worked our way into a tie for third place with some pretty tough teams.

Faced with the final round, we were all give the chance to wager up to 20 points on the last question. We decided the only way to have a chance was to go all in with the full 20.

Here is the question, since I know you’re all wondering…

Put the following in order, from smallest to largest:

• The number of state parks in the State of Arkansas

• The number of carats of the largest diamond ever found at Crater of Diamonds Park in Murfreesboro

• The number of stars on the Arkansas State Flag

• Arkansas’s rank among the 50 states in terms of highest point of elevation If you immediately went, “What?” I assure you that you were not the only one. Now, of those four numbers, I knew one of them immediately. Thanks to 5th grade social studies, I know there are 29 stars on the Arkansas flag (25 along the blue border and four more in the white diamond).

We all also collectively felt like the number of parks was probably the largest. After making those deductions, it was a matter of reasoning out the last two.

We decided that the diamond was probably “bigger than you’d think” and that Arkansas is “pretty flat… even with the mountains.”

So, for the record it was: Stars on the flag (29), rank in elevation (34), carats of the largest diamond (41) and number of state parks (52).

And yes, we got it right!

So congratulations on the Marion School District for their second place finish. And kudos to the West Memphis School District for their third place finish.

And thanks to all of the other teams who participated this year: “Boys in Brew” — Arkansas Distributing Company “We’re Only Here to Establish an Alibi” — ASU Mid-South “East Arkansas’ Finest Hippocratic Critics” — East Arkansas Family Health Center “We Like Big ‘Bucks’ And We Cannot Lie” — Fidelity Bank “ONE Patriot ONE Community” — Marion School District “Nature vs. Nurture” — Mid-South Health Systems “Off Our Meds” — Schneider “Nothing But Trouble” — Southland Casino Racing “The Left Behinds” — Steudlein Leaning Center “The Periodic Table Dancers” — West Memphis School District “Drama Mamas and The Papa Know-It Alls” — Friends Team “Red Hot Trivia Peppers” — Friends Team “We’re Just Here to Gamble…and Support the Arts!” — Friends Team The Hospitality Sponsor for the event was Southland Casino Racing. This year’s Awards Sponsor was The Trophy Shop.

Master of Ceremonies for the night was Phillip Para. The Trivia Challenge Committee was made up of Neki Catron, Raegan Cook, Gena Dorris, and Alex Waddell Smith. Scorekeepers were Angela Davis and Meg Webb.

And as always, Trivia Questions and Research were provided by Pete Pollard.